When the Gap’s outpost in the Marina reopened after renovations last November, Mayor Daniel Lurie did what Mayor Daniel Lurie does best: He christened the San Francisco-based apparel retailer his favorite label — “back” — and posted a perfunctory, upbeat interview with Gap Inc. CEO Richard Dickson, who raved about the store’s “new look and new feel and new energy.”
Local press offered some more specific insight: The Chronicle lauded the store’s revamped “minimalist, modern design” and new section dedicated to vinyl records; 7x7 called the update “very ‘future is now’,” with its “interactive denim displays and AI-powered styling tools.”
In all the press surrounding this Gap reopening, one new addition went entirely unmentioned: A lone white globe, mounted on a divider between the shelves of fleece hoodies and the ramp to the children’s section. It is installed on a vertical track in the wall, so it can move up and down. It is about the size of a bowling ball, with a glowing orange eye.
This is an Orb, the biometric data-collection tool created by Sam Altman’s cryptocurrency and “human verification” company, ominously called World.
On its website, World calls itself “the real human network” and insists that its suite of tools — a cryptocurrency called Worldcoin, a digital WorldID, and a profile on World App — will allow humans to be authenticated as, well, humans. To enter the World Network, all one must do is find an Orb in the physical world and let its glowing orange camera-eye snap a photo of one’s eyes and face.
World, if you choose to believe Altman and Co.’s anesthetizing corporate jargon, is the answer to the problem of bots running rampant online, jamming up concert ticket sales and spreading misinformation on Facebook. Still, that did not answer the question: Why is there an Orb at, of all places, the Gap store?
Last Wednesday, I visited the Chestnut Street Gap to see the Orb for myself.
Do you work at World? Message me securely on Signal at cyd.01. Anonymity assured.
When I first arrived, I had to wander aimlessly among the racks of barrel leg denim and tastefully cropped shirts for about two minutes. Eventually, I found the device, installed on a wall, halfway back in the store. Next to it was a small information plaque.
“At Gap, we believe in originality, authenticity — what makes us human,” the plaque reads. “That’s why we’re partnering with World, to bridge the gap between humans and technology.”
Learning Gap was partnered with a Sam Altman-founded cryptocurrency project was strange — what does denim have to do with crypto? — but it became even stranger when I looked online to find that Gap does not seem to have acknowledged the partnership publicly. On their corporate news blog, the company has announced partnerships with other companies, including DoorDash, and previewed its AI styling tools, but nowhere is there a mention of World. World’s corporate blog has also not mentioned the collaboration.
Gap did not respond to several requests for comment on the partnership.
The only evidence available online was this X post from the Worldcoin account in November, with a photo of Altman, Dickson, Gap (the subsidiary brand of Gap Inc.) president and CEO Mark Breitbard, and Gap creative director Zac Posen standing beside the Orb on the Gap’s reopening day. (Judging by Dickson’s outfit, the photo was taken the same day as Lurie’s visit.)
In person, I was able to find more information — but just barely.
Stationed in a folding chair next to the Orb installation was a World “retail consultant,” who regurgitated the “bridging the gap” messaging when I asked why there was an Orb in the Gap store. The worker also told me that World employees are strictly not allowed to talk to the media but did allow me to take notes while they explained how the Orb worked.
“It’s really easy,” the consultant said, opening the World App on their iPhone. “You just tap ‘I’m with an Orb now,’ and then you scan this QR on the Orb.” They dragged the sphere down the track until it was at eye level. “Then the app will prompt you to look into the camera — and you want to look a little upwards, so your eyes are as wide as possible — and once it takes your picture, it turns it into code that verifies you as a human.”
The fact that the Orb takes a photo, and not a scan, seemed an important distinction that World instructs its representatives to relay to consumers. The consultant emphasized several times that the photo creates a “hash,” or an encrypted code, that does not collect any extra data about the person who checked in at the Orb other than the fact that they are, indeed, a human.
“With data leaks and all that, it makes a lot of sense why people would be nervous,” the consultant said, adding that the photo is deleted from the Orb after you take it. When the consultant looked up the Reddit post that had originally brought me to the store, they rolled their eyes. “This lady” — the poster is anonymous and does not identify their gender — “is scared because she doesn’t understand tech. Yeah, this lady is a little hysterical.”
I tried several times to reword my question. Why was there an Orb in the Gap? Is there an incentive, like a discount on jeans? Why would a person interrupt their shopping experience to scan — sorry, photograph — their eyes?
“I think we’re getting too far into the ‘Gap’ of it all,” the consultant responded.
Instead, they told me about World’s other partnerships: Besides Gap, World also has collaborations with Visa and the gaming company Razer; in Japan, it is partnered with Tinder. Last October, the company also launched a Polymarket widget on the World App, where users can wager Worldcoin. If one needs some easy digicash to buy into the prediction markets, one can sell their biometric data to one of the many Orbs inside the wooden cage at World’s flagship store in Union Square for $50 in $WLD.
On my way out of the store, I asked the cheerful sales associate behind the counter in the children’s section for their take on the Orb.
“People are super curious about it. They go up, do the scan. I’ve done it,” he said.
“Why does Gap have a partnership with World?” I asked.
“That’s a good question!” he said, grinning.
